Of myth and martyrdom

Beginning of the end of the American Century, or validation of the American Dream?

By Nick O'Malley

17 November 2013 — 3:00am

He was a reckless playboy or an emerging statesman, or both. He led the charge on civil rights or dragged his feet, or both. He brilliantly diffused or wantonly provoked the Cuban missile crisis, bringing the world closer than ever to nuclear war, or both.

Half a century after President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas 50 years ago on this day - November 22 - his legacy remains fiercely contested. All that is certain is that the US still lives in the shadow of the assassination and that the American social and political order can still be handily divided into that which came before it and that which came after.

Light and shade: President Kennedy confers with defence secretary Robert McNamara during the Cuban missile crisis.

Photo: Dawson Photography

JFK was never meant to be the president. His father, Joseph P. Kennedy, a millionaire businessman, Democratic political heavyweight and - it seems - former bootlegger, expected all his sons to serve in some capacity, but in his mind he had anointed Joe jnr for the White House.

After Joe jnr, a bomber pilot, was killed in action in August 1944, the responsibility fell to Jack, a Harvard graduate who had considered a career in journalism.

By then Jack had already become a war hero in unlikely circumstances. Originally the Navy had rejected him for service, citing a variety of illnesses and his chronically bad back, but Joe snr pulled strings. Eventually Jack was not only accepted but secured service as Patrol Torpedo Boat commander in the Solomon Islands, ensuring him the combat experience that would be crucial to any future political career.

A year before Joe jnr was killed, JFK's PT boat was hit and sunk by a Japanese destroyer. Two crewmen died outright and JFK towed an injured man six kilometres to a deserted island before swimming again into the darkness to seek rescue for his surviving crew. Today historians agree that his actions after the crash were heroic, just as some argue that his poor seamanship led to the disaster in the first place.

The story burst across front pages and then found its way into the Readers Digest and The New Yorker. With his father's help, Kennedy used it as a springboard into Congress.

In the 1960 election, Kennedy beat Richard Nixon for the White House by just two tenths of 1 per cent of the popular vote.

In order to win office he ran a populist campaign of such ruthlessness that it shocked Nixon, who had had a friendly relationship with him in Congress, says the historian Professor Thomas Whalen of Boston University. Kennedy stoked unfounded fears of a so-called missile gap between the USSR and the US.

Politically, Kennedy's Cold War hawkishness was useful, but along with the Bay of Pigs fiasco that Kennedy inherited but failed to halt, it may also have contributed to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's decision to place nuclear missiles in Cuba just 140 kilometres from the US coast leading to the crisis of October 1962.

As Kennedy and Khrushchev faced off, advisers to both leaders lobbied for war. "They walked to the abyss, they looked over and they were both terrified," says Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Centre for Politics. "We know this is true … Krushchev's son told me himself."

What Kennedy and his military advisers did not know at the time was that the Soviets had not only moved missiles to Cuba, but also tactical nuclear weapons. It seems certain invasion would have rapidly escalated into all-out war.

Kennedy stood fast against senior civilian and military advisers, eventually cutting a deal with Khrushchev. He would (secretly) remove US missiles from Turkey if the Soviets stood down in Cuba. To the rest of the world it looked like a total US victory, perhaps contributing to Khrushchev's downfall, and certainly strengthening Kennedy domestically. Having peered into the abyss together, the two leaders forged a brief detente that led to the treaty banning above-ground nuclear testing.

"If he did not handle it the way he did I would not be here today and nor would a hundred million others," says Laurence Leamer, author of three best-selling books on the Kennedy family.

Despite the crisis, the Kennedy doctrine of containing communism remained in place, leading to Kennedy's escalation in Vietnam. There is today an endless debate over Kennedy's plans in Vietnam, with many believing he was on the verge of pulling out at the time of his death.

Sabato, author of The Kennedy Half-Century, argues JFK's caution would have seen him maintain the American presence in Vietnam at a "low boil". The massive escalation that took place under his successor, Lyndon Johnson, was typical of LBJ, for whom everything had to be "Texas big", Sabato says.

Whalen believes this is beside the point. In approving the assassination of the president of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, Kennedy had committed America to the war. The significance of this, Whalen says, cannot be exaggerated. "That was the beginning of the end of the American Century."

Domestically Kennedy's record is equally mixed. His champions remember him as the father of the Civil Rights Act, a suggestion ridiculed by critics. As a senator he had opposed the civil rights movement and early in his presidency he and his brother, the attorney-general Robert Kennedy, had avoided the issue altogether, fearing it would cost them the party's southern base.

Sabato suggests Kennedy moved on the issue once emboldened by the Cuban crisis. Leamer thinks the ongoing violence in the south demanded a response. Either way, on June 11, 1963, Kennedy acted forcefully, giving what Whalen calls the speech of his life, a television address from the Oval Office. "We are confronted primarily with a moral issue … It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution," he said. "One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs … are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice … this Nation … will not be fully free until all its citizens are free … Now the time has come for this Nation to fulfill its promise.''

It was the first time since Lincoln's assassination that a president had put the authority of his office behind the civil rights of its black citizens.

The Civil Rights Act would later be passed by LBJ, who brilliantly used Kennedy's martyrdom to shepherd it through a hostile Congress, just as he launched his own war on poverty in Kennedy's name.

It seems only when it comes to JFK's relentless infidelity are his critics and champions in accord. One of Kennedy's most enthusiastic critics was Christopher Hitchens, who in a piece for the Atlantic described his White House as "a picture of narcotic and sexual debauchery … that still has the power to make one whistle".

While rumours of Kennedy's affairs circled during his career, after his death the evidence came in. It soon became clear he had risked his presidency in dalliances with secretaries, with actresses, with gangsters' molls and perhaps with a spy.

Even so, the biography of Mimi Alford, who had an affair with Kennedy as a 19-year-old intern, still had the power to shock as recently as 2011. Alford's book revealed that Kennedy spent a deal of time with her during the Cuban missile crisis, and that he directed her to perform oral sex on his friend and aide in his presence.

Even Sabato is briefly lost for words when asked what drove Kennedy's sexual appetite. "He was as reckless personally as he was cautious politically," he says.

Many believe Kennedy, secretly weak and ill throughout his life, was driving at his demons. And observers, Sabato and Leamer included, surmise that the cocktail of anaesthetics and stimulants he was using as a result of his back pain might have contributed.

Despite the revelations, the Kennedy myth stands, largely, Sabato says, because his presidency was emblematic of far more than the man.

Kennedy was the first Catholic and the second-youngest president. He was the first president to understand the power of television, the first celebrity president. He and Jackie were a charismatic blend of Washington DC power and Hollywood beauty.

His determination to put a man on the moon reflected a nation at the height of its optimism and influence. As the grandson of immigrants, Kennedy's election validated the American dream. His assassination then had a profound impact on the nation. It ended a period, Leamer says, when Americans thought they lived outside of history, above the misfortunes of other nations.

"The most common thing you heard people saying," Sabato says, "was 'How could this happen here'?''

"For a generation of Americans [the assassination is] still the most traumatic public event of their lives, 9/11 notwithstanding," wrote New York Times executive editor, Jill Abramson recently.

There are now, Abramson writes, an estimated 40,000 books on JFK, many of them good, none of them great. Much of the literature serves to burnish the Kennedy myth, much of it to traduce the man behind it.

Together, she says, they add up to a void.

Kennedy family tree scarred by family, scandal

To this day the Kennedy family tree remains marked by tragedy and scandal.

After JFK and his brother RFK were assassinated, Jackie Kennedy nourished the Camelot myth, dolling out access to sympathetic reporters. But there was little she could do to stem the flow of ugly stories.

Ted Kennedy was the family's great hope for the highest office after the murder of his brothers. That dream ended when he ran from a car accident, abandoning the body of his young female passenger at Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts.

He remained a senator and eventually rebuilt his reputation but lost his primary race the only time he made a run at the presidency.

After a dozen years in Congress, his son Patrick J. Kennedy withdrew from public life amid problems with substance abuse.

Joseph Kennedy II, the eldest son of Robert Kennedy, suffered from marital troubles and retired from Congress in 1998, citing ''a new recognition of our own vulnerabilities and the vagaries of life''. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend served eight years as Lieutenant-Governor of Maryland, but when she ran for governor in 2002 she was defeated by a Republican in a deeply Democratic state. She is now in academia and raises money for Democrats.

In 1991 William Kennedy Smith was accused and tried for raping a waitress after a night of partying with two relatives, including his uncle Ted. Kennedy Smith was eventually acquitted but has been dogged by sexual harassment charges ever since.

Robert F. Kennedy jnr, nephew of the slain president and an environmental lawyer and radio talk show host, provoked anger when he argued that a vaccine preservative called Thimerosal causes autism in children.

In May 2012, his former wife committed suicide in her New York City home. In September of this year the New York Post published Kennedy's diary, in which he confessed to multiple extramarital affairs.

Michael Kennedy, son of RFK, died at 39 in 1997 after a skiing accident in Aspen, Colorado. Once thought a bright light of the family, his star dimmed when the father of three admitted to having an affair with his family's underage babysitter.

John F. Kennedy jnr, elder son of the late president, died in 1999 with his wife and his wife's sister in a plane crash off the coast of New England. John-John, as he was sometimes called, was the most glamorous Kennedy since his mother, famous for his movie-star good looks and successful career in publishing. He was piloting the plane when it crashed and an investigation blamed him for the accident.

Others, particularly the daughters, have quietly done well. Caroline Kennedy, daughter of JFK, has written books on civil liberties and is US ambassador to Japan. Rory Kennedy, RFK's youngest daughter, is an award-winning documentary filmmaker. Her older sister Kerry is a writer and human rights activist.

The next generation may be led by Joseph P. Kennedy III, grandson of RFK. A teetotaller, he was elected to Congress in 2012 at the age of 32.